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“kin-obligate” business, not that
we really understand it.’ He waved his hand impatiently. ‘No, it’s a place
called Khanaphes.’
    She
stared at him, which he interpreted, incorrectly, as ignorance.
    ‘The
Solarnese know a path to reach it. It’s east of the Exalsee, a long way off any
Collegiate trade route.’ He left the appropriate pause before revealing, ‘A
Beetle-kinden city, Che.’
    Since
her return from Tharn she had been deep in the old tomes of the Moth-kinden.
She had been immersing herself in the world that the revolution had shattered,
in an attempt to find some cure for her own affliction. In the very oldest of
the books and scrolls remaining to the College, amid the most impenetrable
shreds of ancient history, there had been a city of that name. It was a relic
of the forgotten world that the Beetles had shrugged off in order to become
what they were now.
    ‘Think
about it, please.’ Stenwold took her silence for reluctance. He wanted to tell
her that it was a golden opportunity, that she should look to her own future,
capitalize on the respect she had won in the war. He wanted to tell her, in
short, that no mourning could be for ever. He knew better than to say it. ‘Just
think about it. You are a student of the College after all, and the
possibilities for scholarship alone are—’
    ‘I’ll
think about it,’ she said, a little harshly, and he nodded, standing up to go.
‘Another thing,’ she began, her voice sounding strained. ‘You …’ She paused,
gathered her courage together. ‘Please tell the new man about the doors again.
He forgets.’
    Stenwold
stared at her, a welter of different emotions momentarily at war across his
broad face.
    ‘It’s
not just me … it’s … I’m thinking about Arianna as well.’ Che’s voice shook
under the sheer humiliation of having to say it.
    ‘Of
course I will,’ he said. ‘Of course. I’ll have a word with him when I go back
downstairs.’
    The expedition was approved by the Assembly, despite anything that
Broiler and his supporters could say against it. The Town vote, comprising the
merchants and magnates, scoffed at the expense, but the Gown vote of the
College masters was mostly for it, and Drillen’s promise to secure funding
without troubling either College or Assembly coffers sealed the matter neatly.
There was no suggestion that the proposal had been stage-managed from the start.
    The very
night of the Assembly meeting, however, found a clerk working late. Drillen was
a rigorous employer who demanded results from the least of his underlings, so
candlelight in the late evenings was nothing unusual. This clerk, a young man
who had hoped to make more of himself, and had lived beyond his means, was just
finishing his last missive. The letters seemed nonsense, strings of meaningless
babble, but an informed eye would have deciphered them as:
    Urgent.
Codeword: ‘Yellowjacket’. You told me to keep an eye on all dealings of
Stenwold Maker, so this should interest you: the expedition being launched to
Canafes (sp?) is not as it seems. JD and SM met twice beforehand re: this
matter. Unusual secrecy. Believe JD and SM have their own purposes aside from
those stated. Thought you would appreciate knowing.
    He folded the note over, and went over to his rack of couriers. Drillen
used these various insects as missivecarriers across the city. They rattled and
buzzed in their tubes, each tube with its label to show what place the creature
was imprinted on. The clerk, whose responsibility these carrier-creatures were,
selected one carefully: a fat, furry-bodied moth. It bumbled out of its tube
and crouched on his desk, cleaning its antennae irritably as he secured the
message to its abdomen. He had no idea where it went, or to whom, save that it
would not be the man who had originally recruited him into this double-dealing.
He only knew that the insect would be returned safe, along with a purse of
money, to his house. This told him two things: